


Bookmark

by DwarvenBeardSpores



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Domestic, Fluff, M/M, Mistreatment of books, Reading, Reading Aloud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 20:15:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5305361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DwarvenBeardSpores/pseuds/DwarvenBeardSpores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel does not understand the importance of treating books properly. Dean finds a solution. </p>
<p>Based on a tumblr headcanon by whelvenwings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bookmark

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a tumblr post by whelvenwings. Very schmoopy and domestic.

Dean finds a book about cuttlefish on the table, spread open to save Castiel’s place and simultaneously destroy the book’s spine. He sighs and closes it properly, vowing to tell Cas off when he gets out of the shower. 

Cas beats him to it. He comes into the kitchen wrapped up in his robe, holding the book and scowling. “Dean, I was reading this.”

“Yeah, I know.” Dean wipes his hands on a towel. “And you can’t just leave them open like that. It fucks up the binding.”

Cas glares. “I don’t remember where I left off.”

“You’ll find it, babe,” Dean says, and offers Cas a warm pan. “Here. Have a brownie.”

Cas takes the dessert, but the look on his face suggests he’s not appeased.

~~~~~

He does learn, though. A few days pass and Dean doesn’t find any scandalously open books lying around. He considers it a personal victory.

Until he and Cas are in bed one evening, and Cas is reading him some sappy romance novel that Dean only pretends to hate. Dean is drifting off to the low rumble of Cas’s voice and the warmth of his body next to him when Cas says “that’s all for tonight.” Dean cracks his eyes open to protest, but instead finds Cas folding down a corner of the page and closing the book.  
 “Hey, no.” Dean says, reaching for the book. 

Cas holds it out of reach. “I’ll read you more tomorrow.”

“No, don’t- don’t do that. With the pages.”

Cas squints at him. 

“Don’t dog-ear the pages,” Dean says, a little more awake now. “Come on, that’s like the worst thing.”

“I need to save my place,” Cas insists. “And you said I can’t leave the book open.”

“You can’t. You’re supposed to be nice to books, Cas. Don’t treat ‘em like crap.”

“I don’t,” Cas insists. “They are still perfectly readable.”

“Yeah, but it’s annoying.”

“So is accidentally reading ahead while looking for my place,” Cas retorts. He places the book on the bedside table, as far away from Dean’s meddlesome fingers as possible. 

They will wake up tangled together like usual, but they go to sleep with their backs to each other, stubbornly refusing to do anything that looks like giving in. 

~~~

Cas keeps dog-earing pages. He does it with his books, with books from the library, and with Dean’s books, which is totally unacceptable. And yes, Dean had said “read whatever you want,” and gestured at his collection, but when his copy of Cat’s Cradle appears in the kitchen with seven pages bent, he decides he needs to take action before the novelization of Star Trek The Motion Picture that Charlie gave him goes the same way. 

When he confronts Cas about it, he gets the response. “Fine I won’t read your books any more.” Which isn’t what Dean wanted at all. 

“Has the guy never heard of a fucking bookmark?” Dean mutters to himself. He unbends another two pages before he comes to the realization that, even if he has, Cas almost certainly doesn’t have a bookmark. 

“Hey Cas!” he shouts, before deciding that, if he doesn’t want bills, newspaper articles, dollar bills, receipts, and who knows what else ending up between the pages of Cas’s books, he had better find the guy a bookmark himself. 

“What?” Cas shouts back. 

“Can you bring me some leftover pizza?” Dean improvises. It isn’t very hard, because he does want leftover pizza. 

There’s a moment of silence and Dean finishes straightening the pages, then tucks the book back on his shelf. Cas comes in with three slices of cold pizza on a plate. “We just had lunch,” he reminds Dean. He obviously thinks they’re still fighting. 

“Yeah, I know. Still hungry.” Dean pauses before digging in. “Thanks babe.”

Cas looks surprised at the sudden affection, but not displeased. “You’re welcome, Dean.”

~~~

Dean’s first plan is to just cut a strip of paper and hand it to Cas, but then he decides that that’s not good enough. If he wants Cas to commit to a bookmark, it might as well be a nice-looking bookmark, and one that Cas can spot easily. 

So he grabs a pen and starts drawing. He’s not much of an artist, but he can doodle his car pretty well, so he starts with that. Then he puts her on a road across the top of the paper, and adds a few tufts of grass to the side. The grass turns into this tiny little meadow with a few flowers in it, and then Dean adds a large bee, cause he knows those are Cas’s favorites. The bee gets a beehive which ends up looking kind of like a cupcake, so Dean draws some pastries next. He draws a sun and a cloud over the Impala, to fill in a little empty space. Then he’s got just a little bit of room at the bottom, so he writes CAS and then surrounds it in a heart. It doesn’t occur to him until after he’s done it that it’s almost disgustingly sappy, and by then it’s too late to do anything about it. 

Except…

It’s still not done. It’s a lot nicer now, sure, but Cas deserves something really fucking great. Dean chews his lower lip and considers, then he hides the bookmark in his sock drawer and heads to the car.

~~~~

He’s back a half-hour later with a box of crayons. He’d just been planning to swipe a four-pack from a diner with a kids menu, but the first place he went to had downsized to the really crappy crayons, and if he was making a whole trip of it he might as well get the good stuff. So he’d stopped in a craft store and bought a box of 24. 

Just so he could color Cas a fucking bookmark, oh god. 

But color it he does. Using every color in the box. 

~~~~

After all that, he can’t even give it to Cas in person. He tucks it in the book Cas is reading, right at the most recently marked page.

Cas finds him outside, working on a car in an attempt to regain some of his masculinity. He wraps his arms around Dean’s soft middle and kisses him just behind the ear. “It’s beautiful,” he says. 

“You had better not bend any more of my books,” Dean says with as much grump as he can muster. 

Cas scoffs innocently. “I have no idea why I’d want to do that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as dwarven-beard-spores.


End file.
